Mon Jan 07, 2019 11:04 am
#1663474
“Ah didnae mean tae kill him, yer Honour”, a well worn phrase used by many a young man before being banged up for the best years of his life, at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
No matter our pet theor(ies), whether it’s recreational substances, video games, poverty, lack of opportunity, violent upbringing, unmarried single parents etc – best stick to the actual peer reviewed evidence where it exists. So many arguments and counters to those arguments – and that’s before the likes of the Wail and uninformed vote-chasing politicians wade in.
No matter if you banned totally all substances (booze included), all video games (I grew up in the era of Pong and Space Invaders…correlation with local violence, <1% I’d say), had world beating education, eradicated poverty and offered plenty of opportunity, the necessary huge prison capacity for those contravened etc there would still be violence.
There is a small but consistent part of pretty much any population who have violent psychiatric issues, or “normal” people who for one reason or another have violent psychotic episodes.
The latter, for example, I got marginally caught up in, in my early teens. Up at the local hospital with my mother (can’t remember why), and cops were searching back seats and boot of every car leaving.
The young cop recognized me (I’m the spitting image of my father – he laughed and said so without us uttering a word), and I found out later that day from my Dad he was on-site, as it was a potential murder scene.
Some local lad had a nervous breakdown, tried to get help by taking a bus to the hospital, waited a few hours at A&E – not sure exactly what happened after, but he ended up going outside and stabbed the first (male) white coat he saw.
It wasn’t the first time, and sadly not the last such occurrence at that hospital (or others I’m sure)
Coincidence that this was around the time of the great “care in the community” firesale.